Various types of gunnery training apparatus are known in the marketplace and have been proposed in the patent literature. U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,253 describes a gunnery trainer which employs a slide projector for projecting realistic target scenes. Simulated aiming of a gun under trainee control is effected by movement of the projected target scene relative to the reticle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,467 describes apparatus and a technique for imparting stabilization error to the line of sight of a simulator. The simulator contains a real time record of stabilization error experienced by the line of sight of the fire control combat system being simulated.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,304 describes leader and recoil simulator apparatus which, using a hydraulic jack, simulates the recoil forces encountered during actual firing. U.S. Pat. No. 4,260,384 describes an obscuration device for tank gunners which is operative to automatically and selectively obscure the view out of the tank seen by the gunner in response to the firing of the main gun of the tank so as to simulate the obscuration produced by smoke, heat and debris during an actual firing.
There is also known a tank gunnery trainer manufactured by Perceptronics of the U.S.A. and known as model MK 60. This trainer employs a plurality of video images stored on a video disk device, each of the images corresponding to a different still or moving target. The trajectory of a projectile "fired" by a trainee is not shown on the video image, but instead, the effect of the firing is overlaid on the video image seen by the trainee by means of simulated imaging techniques on the display. Gunnery training systems of conventional construction are extremely costly, complex, and maintenance intensive.
Information retrieval systems are known wherein a video playback system and a video cassette library are employed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,468 shows such a system, while U.S. Pat. No. 3,729,581 describes a computer assisted dial access video retrieval system for an instructional television system, employing video tapes.